1. Field of the Invention
The invention is in the field of methods for treating and preventing GI Syndrome and Graft Versus Host Disease.
2. Description of the Related Art
Radiation remains one of the most effective treatments for a wide variety of malignant cells; however healthy cells of the bone marrow, hair follicle, epidermis and gastrointestinal tract are extremely sensitive to radiation-induced cell death, limiting the effective use of this therapy for the treatment of cancer. Bone marrow transplantation is another way to treat advanced cancer, however, organ transplants frequently evoke a variety of immune responses in the host, which results in rejection of the graft and graft-versus-host disease (hereinafter, referred to as “GVHD”). Bone marrow transplantation is currently used to treat a number of malignant and non-malignant diseases including acute and chronic leukemias, myelomas, solid tumors (R. J. Jones, Curr Opin Oncol 3 (2), 234 (1991); G. L. Phillips, Prog Clin Biol Res 354B, 171 (1990)), aplastic anemias and severe immunodeficiency's (R. P. Gale, R. E. Champlin, S. A. Feig et al., Ann Intern Med 95 (4), 477 (1981); G. M. Silber, J. A. Winkelstein, R. C. Moen et al., Clin Immunol Immunopathol 44 (3), 317 (1987)). The conditioning regimen required prior to transplantation, designed to ablate or suppress the patient's immune system, renders the patient susceptible to neoplastic relapse or infection. Recent use of unrelated and HLA non-identical donors has unfortunately increased the incidence of GvHD. While removal of T cells from the donor marrow graft ameliorates GvHD, this strategy increases graft failure rates and markedly diminishes the therapeutically-beneficial graft-versus-tumor effect. As such, overall survival does not improve. Further, despite strong pre-clinical data, attempts to improve GvHD outcomes by diminishing inflammatory cytokine action by adding TNF antagonists to corticosteroids, the standard of care for acute GvHD, has provided limited therapeutic benefit. Thus there is an urgent need for alternative strategies to reduce the incidence and severity of GI syndrome and GvHD, if it is to be optimized clinically.